Sunday, 25 March 2012

Pensez Pink

Are you allowed to be different in Paris? And are the French really as fashion chic and clothes snobby as we always think?

Sometimes, very rarely, you see a Parisian punk, a French one, and it's hilarious. I mean, so unusual, that they do get looks.

Which slams it home to me that in London about 50% of the people walking down Oxford Street have ripped tartan trousers, chains and safety pins dripping from every orifice, and razor sharp pink Mohicans the size of theLondon Eye threatening to take your eye out at ten paces.

Paris seems terribly tame in comparison. Even a leather jacket on the tube gets looks. About the only people who get away with it are the homeless, and they can get away with anything. See my recent pic of the Scottish punk for proof of this. Desperately searching for an identity in a world that's moving on without them. Or perhaps trying to hold on to one. Or forge one.

To be honest, the underground SDF community has a lot more solidarity and mutual camaraderie and commradeship than there is in my own life. I have to give them that.

In terms of cars, even if you do have a red Ferrari in the garage, the last thing to do is drive through the middle of Paris with the roof down (can you do that with Ferraris - oops) and the stereo blasting. One doesn't show; one doesn't flash. One is subtle and one fits in. Conforms to a great extent.

Little aberrations from the above norms are generally looked upon as harmless idiosyncrasies, and not taken seriously. Unless you want to get the MD's job, in which case your shocking pink Fiat 500 probably ain't gonna cut it. There are limits.

As for me, I was never a punk, but I was a sort of hybrid hippy/rocker, with long blond hair down to my waist, five earrings and a couple of jackets which would definitely got me some disapproving stares in dear old Paris if I'd been here at the time. Those days are gone, alas, and the most daring I get these days is almost shaving my head occasionally in an attempt to be vaguely cool before there's vaguely nothing to shave. Funny how what goes down must come up, don't you think? And if you do, think pink.